Carlos

Yeah my brother and I are doing a bunch of CA-NV-AZ driving soon, both experienced with 40’ and he has a CDL.

And apparently you're not familiar with the ways of a Real Man(tm). For example, I only need one cleaning product in my RV or the tow vehicle.

I'm a man, so I assume that means shoving t-shirts into a backpack as hard as possible.

I treat women and men equally. I've NEVER had a woman tell me to f-off when I offered to help, only men. Just recalled that last night I was talking with a neighbor and great friend about this very topic. He made a life-long camp friend by offering to help fix his VERY screwed weight distribution setup. He may have saved a life, and now always has great Mexican camp food when they go to the same campground a couple times a year.

There's a Turkey Creek near me here in AZ. I assume that's not the one you mean.

Yeah, that info may change everything. I have a rather open schedule in the range of a few days, so out in the West I might be able to helpl.

When I get devices from customers, I wipe them and donate them either to a domestic violence shelter, or a facility that helps the homeless get jobs. Both groups of people need a cheap way to get phone calls. Both of those organizations give people something like 300 minutes a month so they can get job interviews, talk to police about their situation, and stay in touch with family.

We spent about 12 years with a boat in a marina, basically a floating RV in an RV park. We got to see a lot of stupid. I was always the first one to volunteer to help, or that the marina would call if needed. But some people would either mildly or aggressively refuse help. I can recall a few who said something like "mind your own f-ing business" a few seconds before the sound of crunching fiberglass and breaking dock wood. Yup, I won't get in your way, but I will take video and put it on Youtube. Even if I disagree with someone, I'll take their opinion and mesh it with my own.

Yeah, it's definitely not a huge deal. Also I toss our normal RV rug under the spot where I'm working. Really the dirtiest part is my hands, and I keep various types of work and nitrile gloves for that.

What rant?? Just facts. You can research and verify them. I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. Good enough is for each person to decide. Having weeks old backup would never fly for my customers, or for me. It's also cheaper and safer to store backups online. Whatever someone chooses after being exposed to facts is not my concern, but they should at least know and consider every option and know the actual costs.

Dress pants? Who wears dress pants while RVing? And why? But yeah, shorts and jeans simply don't need washing all the time. My brother carries a "bunny suit" mechanic's onesie in his rig, I should do that. If you have to work on something, put that on, and none of your real clothes get dirty. The mechanic suit lives in the basement.

Washing and showering depend on your own body chemistry, the weather and location, clothing, etc. Wife and I don't get smelly easily, so skipping 1-2 days of showers doesn't feel like prison (which is odd, because I think they shower daily). Particularly in cool weather. Jeans should never be washed daily or even weekly anyway, so there's one item that you can bring only a couple of. T-shirts are mostly a one day thing. Neither of play dress-up on trips so it's not like we're bringing dress shirts and dresses or anything like that. Underwear needs daily rotation, but it's small. It's also easily washed in a sink and hung over a door to dry, same with t-shirts. Again, planning with variables based on your own expectations.

So you have nothing useful to add?

Yeah, keep an open mind. You have no idea what you'll like until you do it. We were also cabin boaters for over a decade (floating RV). We thought we'd hate marina life (campground), but then loved it. We ended up paying nearly $500/mo to keep a boat there for a long time. I have to say though that most marinas and most boaters are better FOR US than most campgrounds and most RVers. But you never know. Worst mistakes I've made in my life are pre-judging how I will feel about something or how it will work out.

Most parks and campgrounds have rules, and within those, I don't think anyone has room to complain. I've been in a campground where someone's unruly kids were louder than my quiet generator, from about 150' away. That's worse than the generator. But during the DAY, we have to put up with some loss of quiet.

I already answered it for the most part. The secondary answer is that if WE don't want to hear a generator, we make sure to park away from other people. Everyone has a right to run a reasonably quiet generator. It's a different story if you're running one of those junk contractor generators.

Everyone has different standards and needs. I think that's the point a lot of us are making. If we're away from people, we don't worry about disturbing anyone. And while I hate generator noise, we never just sit around camp all day, so we run it while we're away. If it comes down to it, an hour of generator isn't going to destroy my enjoyment.

Then I'd recommend a generic outdoor wifi camera, and a separate motion light. At night, the camera's built-in IR will light the criminal from that angle, and the light from another angle. I find that highly effective for my front door. Something like this would also fit on an RV very well: https://www.foscam.com/us/cameras/outdoor/foscam-fi9851p-720p-hd-wifi-indoor-ip-camera.html That brand is always good. I have some, and several of my neighbors do too. It takes a normal 12v input so you can run it straight off RV battery power.

You said it Joe. I am 54 and have been RVing mostly in the boonies since 10 years old. I have never owned or been in an RV with solar. Same with various cabin boats we have owned, which are just floating RVs

It just depends on usage. I've done ten days in the desert on batteries and a generator. The batteries would hold for a couple days, then run a few hours of generator, repeat. We were in the middle of nowhere, the generator can run while we go play in the Jeep or on the dirt bikes, and we didn't even need to hear it.

Yes, it's important to remember that this is still satellite, and still not as "portable" or as easy to use as cellular. The current satellite systems such as BGAN use an antenna like this, which likely will still be used with the new stuff, at least at first: The big differences in the new system are the orbit level, and the throughput. Current systems orbit higher, which means farther, which means high latency. Latency makes some applications annoying and others unusable. Web usage with high latency means an annoyingly slow response to clicks. For things like voice and two-way video, it means a long delay between the person speaking and the person hearing. I have had two satellite phones, and had to train everyone I talked to that they need to wait half a second between speaking and hearing a response. The throughput on this is huge, while old systems were super slow. That means the old systems had to charge a lot. These will have lots of capacity so it will be cheap.

First, remember that she's looking for backups. She would still use local storage for working, as it would be crazy to use online storage for live files in the case of images and video. Even if you use something super high end like Amazon backup, it's less than $200 per year. And there are lots of less expensive options offering a terabyte for $10/year. For example, Acronis is a well-recognized name in both enterprise and personal backup, and you can get their software with online storage for $50 for 5TB. Dirt cheap. Backblaze is a few bucks more, but also automatically backs up any external drives you may also use (if that's needed). Shipping drives around exposes them to theft/loss, so the data needs to be encrypted. Does the OP know how to do that reliably, and then to always remember the passphrase to decrypt it? They are also exposed to damage, particularly regular (non-SSD) drives. And of course, the backups are old, while online backups are always up-to-date if you have an internet connection. I have multiple backups, because after 35 years in IT, I know what can go wrong. I have my desktop and laptop in sync. Then BOTH get their own backup hard drives. The laptop's is an SSD and goes traveling with me. Then ALL machines are ALSO backed up to Google, iCloud, and Amazon individually. The online backups are the ones I will count on if the house is robbed or catches fire. The local backups are for normal restores such as when setting up a new computer.

Yes, of course, since it is.

How do you define "security?" I'm not being a smartass, it's an honest question because I find people mean different things. We can assume you won't be watching the cameras 24x7, so...do you expect them to give you motion alerts so you can respond? Or do you just want recordings of what DID happen when someone broke in? Will you always have wifi or an existing cellular to wifi hotspot in place for the camera to connect to?

Yeah, you're almost guaranteed not to have health issues with most water in the US, or with any tanks that make it here. But we just hate the taste of tap water in most places, so we use bottles. There's also the convenience of just having a sealed non-spill container next to you all the time.